Scottland and the Rollercoaster of Doom

Scottland's visit last week was fantastic. More on that below.

Everything not related to his visit? Ugh. I'm really getting hammered by the homework monster right now. I sorta think I'm getting most of the material, but I feel very frazzled at the edges. I even had my first grad school nightmare last night. Thankfully, it was relatively straightforward in terms of interpretation. Basically, I'm in some random class being taught by some random dykish looking female professor. I feel like I'm understanding the material, but I don't want to ask any questions because she's really mean to the other students that ask 'dumb' questions. Then, towards the end of class, I freak out when I look at my notes and realize that what I thought was comprehensible writing was actually just random bits of swirly chicken scratch in weird spiral patterns. Yes, it was like a scene out of "A Beautiful Mind." Things then get even weirder when the dyke-prof.. demands that we all walk over to a piano and start praying and singing hymns. We all sort of shuffle over to the piano, but when I realize that the professor is serious, I balk and angrily retort that "you can't demand that we sing hymns and pray at a public university." The professor angrily glares at me with this sort of "you're right about that and I'm going to flunk you for contradicting me" look and then starts banging away at the keyboard as all the other students start belting out the Lord's Prayer. And then I wake up.

So yeah, graduate school is starting to get to me, I think. I'm just glad this is most likely a one term thing. Once it's over and I haven't failed out of school, I probably won't get this stressed out again until maybe my general exam or when I have to defend.

The visit with Scottland was very, very good. Everytime he visits, I'm more at ease about the whole long distance dating thing. It's just going very well, as near as I can tell. The weekend was generally uneventful, although Friday was Scottland's 36th birthday (which we celebrated with a custom built ice-cream cake and Saturday saw us going to the Six Flags park near San Francisco for some crazy giant rollercoasting fun.

Now mind you, I've never been on a "real" rollercoaster before. I've been on those silly little things that you sometimes see at state fairs and the like, but I've never been on an honest to goodness giant rollercoasters that are bolted to the ground.

The first coaster I went on was actually something along the lines of a magnetic rail gun for people. Basically, powerful electromagnets propel you up this corkscrewed incline. When you stop moving forward you start falling backwards, and the electromagnets kick in again at the bottom to push you even faster in the back direction. It's sorta like a kid sticking out and pulling in his legs on a swing. You go up this crazy upside-down vertical pole at the back end of the thing. Since I was in the first seat the first time I did this, I was literally sitting in seat such that my face was parallel to the ground, although there was about one hundred feet of open air between me and SPLAT!!

The next coaster I went on (Roar) was a traditional wooden coaster. Suzanne and Scottland had both warned me that the ride on a wooden coaster was pretty rough, and boy they weren't kidding. Still, setting the exceedingly bouncy ride aside, the whole thing was really cool. The coaster was a pretty "tight" design, so you were constantly going down insanely steep slopes and then straight back up weirdly tilted inclines. Very cool.

After that, we went on Kong. Kong was my first experience with a modern steel track design. It's much smoother than a wooden coaster because the structure of the thing doesn't vibrate as much and the joints between connections are much smoother. As a result, you're ride is simply more "smooth." The coaster is an "inverted floorless" design, which means that your seat hangs from a track and there's no floor beneath you. So, inversions mean that you're above the coaster and upside down. The picture I included shows you what I mean. It's too bad that the stupid palm tree was in the way, or it would've been a much better picture. So, Kong was fun, but kinda short and oddly unimpressive. I think that as Scottland pointed out, the thing is really tight, which means you don't have many really sharp drops towards the ground and you spend so much time inverted that you sorta just get used to it. Inversions are definitely best when used sparingly.

After Kong, we went on this silly 3D haunted museum ride. It was fun, but kinda corny. Basically you sat in a hydraulic chair wearing 3D glasses and "rode" through a haunted mine. It felt sorta realistic at times, but the ride was too long and the charm wore off with about 20 seconds to go. Still, it was better than the Stargate ride that would've normally been playing.

After the Haunted Mine Ride, it was time for Medusa. Medusa was by far and away the best ride at the park. The drop from the top was 150 feet all the way to the ground. I guess we got up to about 70 mph at that point. You go through a number of inversions and near inversions, but they're placed strategically so that you only have a short time (long enough to freak out) to see them coming before you're in them, but when you aren't in them, you really can't see them. So yeah, this was the ride where I found myself getting really excited. At first I was scared, but then I just thought it was cool.

We rode Medusa four or five more times after that, went to some haunted houses where I got to watch Scottland jump and scream a number of times and then went home. It was a good day and Scottland is already starting to talk about where our next Rollercoaster trip is going to be.